5 Ways I'll Stay Organised with my Personalised 2020 Papier Diary

I did it. I joined the bandwagon, fell for the hype and a few weeks back and got myself a personalised Papier diary with a huge £15 discount and I don't regret a thing! I hadn't actually bought myself a diary for 2020 so I needed one anyway and I find diaries really useful to keep myself organised. I've been using a paper diary for as long as I can remember and as much as I try, I cannot get my head around a digital diary on my phone. I also really enjoy physically of writing out my plans and tasks for the days, weeks and months ahead and something to look back on when the year is over.

Firstly, let's address how utterly gorgeous this diary is!? It's got my name on it and it's a beautiful pink floral print. I totally forgot to take photos of the back, but it's the same just with a navy blue background. (I hope it's a future colour because it's so pretty.) It''s pretty classic inside but it's perfect for anyone who likes to keep things simple and add their own touch to it. You'll see in the photos to come what the inside looks like. I have my bullet journal to keep things creative and exciting so it's nice to have something simpler for a change! There were so many choices on the Papier website and I wanted something a little more sophisticated, fun and girly. I always go for the bold and colourful prints or something beautifully simple, but too simple for me. I sometimes get bored of a simple design. I saw this one and I just had to go for it. It caught my eye though it's not usually my style. But to put it simply, I love it.

Today, I thought I would share five ways I'll be using my new Papier diary to keep my life, work and blogging on track for the year ahead as well as showing off my new diary and its features. As I've said, I really like paper diaries to keep myself organised but I'm trying out some new strategies and just thought I'd share in case anyone else wanted some tips!

1. Planning for the week ahead.
At work, we often have a meeting where we look at the week ahead and it really helps me get an idea of what the working week will look like. I jot down all the things I need in my big work diary and I know exactly what's happening, when and who's involved, etc. It's so useful that I'm starting to use it in my own personal diary. This year, I plan to use my diary to plan my week ahead on a Sunday evening including everything from the real important stuff and blogging to the to-do lists and housework.

2. Make full use of the note pages for inspiration and growth.
Something we all forget is that there are usually a bunch of notebook style pages at the back of our diaries and this Papier one has the cutest range of notepaper! I love them and I really want to make use of them to plan out blog posts, write my bucket list and write my action plans for my blog and Instagram. With a lot of goals to work on growing my blog this year, I feel that the back of my notebook will be a perfect place to keep track of all this. Though I do have a blogging notebook, it's pretty much a brain dump so I'd like a place to go whenever I'd like to keep track of goals, lists and action points.

3. Track my month.
As well as looking over the week ahead, this Papier diary has a spot for monthly goals, to-do lists, important dates and a wish list. I've already got started on January's and it's been useful to go back and just check it. As well as using the note pages for all my tracking and inspiration, this is a great place for an overall overview of the month. I just looked back and saw that I hadn't ticked off anything from my wishlist (which isn't actually a bad thing) but I thought 'ooh, maybe I need to move that over to February' and spotted that I'd done all I can so far on my month's to-do list. These pages have already been useful and it'll be nice to see how I get on with monthly set goals.

4. Plan in 'nothing' days.

Over the last couple of years, I learnt that having days to do nothing is really important and I want to make sure that at least once a fortnight, I have a day that I give myself to do nothing- if I want to. What I mean by that, is that I'll plan things around it, but I'll give myself no commitments to any events, tasks, anything for a day every two weeks to ensure I give myself days to just be and do whatever I like for myself. They'll mainly be weekend days but it just means I get to do what I want and if nothing is that thing, then I can and avoid feeling guilty about it because I've committed to it. I often feel guilty because I planned to do something and did nothing (which is what I really wanted to do, so I did). This is more for my wellbeing. I like giving myself nothing days so that I avoid a guilty feeling and so that I become more accountable towards things I need to do on other days and more proactive to complete them. It's so important to give yourselves a day off regularly and so I'm planning in those days!

5. Colour coding.
This year, I'm going to try something new and colour code my diary a little bit and it's something I do in my bullet journal and helps me keep my tasks and events in order. The aim is to ensure that I'm aware of the types of things I have planned, how many and what things I'm focusing on each day, etc. I simply designate a colour for each category. For example, blogging tasks, housework, important dates, social events and work. It's always useful to ensure particular things don't clash (like social events) and to gauge how you spend your time each day, week or month. I also like to plan days specifically for a group of tasks, so I'll just highlight the day in that colour too and then any other events in the relevant colours. So I might have a blogging day, but I'm going to dinner with friends later. The day will be boxed or highlighted a colour and the dinner will be highlighted a different colour.

I'm a scatty so-and-so and I need to be as organised as I possibly can. I get into an awful pattern of being extremely organised and then not-at-all. I think writing this post will not only help me stay accountable for my organisation skills but remind me what I can do to be more organised and what I've committed to.

I'd love it if you shared some of your organisational skills in the comments or over on my Twitter @CatttSays. I like seeing how people stay organised with diaries, bullet journals, to-do lists and even physically with things like cupboard spaces, storage ideas and what-not. I even have a whole Pinterest board just for storage and organisational ideas. Scrolling through it is so satsifying. I'm hoping to write about organisation in the home a little more over the next few months... Watch this space! I'm waiting to pop some big news for an up and coming series...

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Welcome to my blog where I share my ways to live and look stylish - but on a budget. I'm all about affordability and creativity. Follow me and my journey to dressing well for less and creating beautiful home spaces for less.